When the College Board makes a mistake
It has recently come to light that the College Board misgraded one question in the math section on the May SAT. Check out the question and a discussion of what happened here.
The most troubling part to me? The only way this came to light is because this test was released to test takers through the Question and Answer service. That is, we only know that the College Board made a mistake with grading because this is one of the handful of tests each year for which the questions and answers are released afterwards to students who pay an extra sum to the College Board. An error like this on the June test, in contrast, would be undetectable.
The College Board (like the ACT) administers many test forms that remain unreleased. Both companies also tend to reuse these unreleased tests, often a year or two after an initial administration. Most likely, then, students had previously taken this particular form and had their misgraded scores submitted to colleges. For any of these tests, there’s a lack of transparency. Students are left to trust the SAT and ACT to administer a fair test and grade it correctly.
Realistically, this error will not affect many testakers: the question in play is a free response question, and the issue was that some of the correct answers were simply not counted as correct. But that an error like this could make its way into an actual test is a problem, one that I hope prompts the College Board to revisit its process of test review.